Gas tax: A gift that insists on taking
Pennsylvania’s gasoline tax is the gift that keeps on taking.
Motorists were greeted this week with more pain at the pump when the state’s tax on gasoline increased by 8 cents, making it the third time in four years that the tax has been raised.
At 58.3 cents per gallon, Pennsylvania now has the highest gasoline tax in the nation.
It’s a legacy of former Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett, a Republican, who signed into law Act 89 of 2013, an infrastructure bill passed in the Republican-controlled Legislature with bipartisan support, that lifted the oil franchise cap on gasoline, allowing for the skyrocketing tax rate.
That franchise cap was lifted gradually over the past four years, increasing the gasoline tax by more than 27 cents.
While the additional money – along with more vehicle fees and higher tolls on the Pennsylvania Turnpike – is helping PennDOT improve roads and bridges across the state, one must ask when will it be enough?
It must be a difficult pill to swallow for conservatives that Republicans, the party of fiscal responsibility and lower taxes, went along with Act 89 that has been a defacto back-door tax increase on the state’s motorists.
Meanwhile, Corbett at the time denied it was a tax increase at all as he ran for re-election and lost in 2014.
We’ll let you be the judge of that the next time you fill up your gas tank.